“Young,” said Gullah Joe.

“I learned when I was young,” said Denmark.

“You never be young,” said Gullah Joe.

Denmark grimaced at that. “You right, Gullah Joe.”

“Your wife,” said Margaret.

Denmark looked at the slave woman he had bought and ruined. “She never let me call her that.”

“She never told you her name, either,” said Margaret.

Denmark shook his head. “I never call her by no slave name. She never tell me her true name. So I got no name for her.”

“Would you like to speak that name? Don’t you think that in her present state, she’d like to hear someone call her by name?”

“When she be in her right mind she don’t want me to,” said Denmark.

“Slavery makes people do strange things,” said Margaret.

“I never was a slave,” said Denmark.

“You were, all the same,” said Margaret. “They fenced you around with so many laws. Who is more a slave than the man who has to pretend he’s a slave to survive?”

“That didn’t make me do that to her.”

“I don’t know,” said Margaret. “Of course you made your own choices. You tried to find a wife in just the way your father did—you bought one. Then you found yourself in a corner. You thought murder was your only hope. But at the last moment you couldn’t do it.”

“Not the last moment,” said Denmark. “The moment after.”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “Almost too late.”

“Now I live with her every day,” said Denmark. “Now who own who?”

“All that anger outside—what if they kill? Do you think they’re murderers?”

“You think they not?” asked Denmark.

“There has to be something between murder and innocence. I’ve seen the darkest places in everyone’s heartfire, Denmark. There’s no one who doesn’t have memories he wishes he didn’t have. And there are crimes that arise from—from decent desires gone wrong, from justified passions carried too far. Crimes that began only as mistakes. I’ve learned never to judge people. Of course I judge whether they’re dangerous or not, or whether they did right or wrong, how can anyone live without judging? What I mean is, I can’t condemn them. A few, yes, a few who love the suffering of others, or who never think of others at all, worthless souls that exist only to satisfy themselves. But those are rare. Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

“I know you scared,” said Denmark. “You talk when you scared.”

“We’re safe enough here,” said Margaret. “I’m just ... what you did to your wife, Denmark. Do you think I haven’t thought of doing that to someone? An enemy? Someone who I know will someday cause the death of the person I love most, the person I’ve loved my whole life, from childhood up. I know that desperate feeling. You have to stop him. And then you see the chance. He’s helpless. All you have to do is let nature take its course, and he’s gone.”

“But you call your husband,” said Denmark. “You wave your arms and make letters in the air. Somehow he see that.”